The President.---- and to all of you in the 15th
annual March for Life rally.

Miss
Gray. Mr. President, I wanted to welcome you to this 15th March for Life. The prolife Americans are coming here from every State of the Union. We appreciate so much
your prolife words, but we do want to mention that we
are somewhat disappointed that once again in December you unfortunately were
assigning some public monies for abortions here in the District of Columbia. And we do want to ask
today, as we join -- that even though we have spent a lot of time lobbying with
the White House, unfortunately, those monies were appropriated to kill the preborn children in the District of Columbia. We would love
to hear from you today, Mr. President, that we will not have any more
appropriations for abortions in the District or anywhere else.

The President. Well, Nellie, sometimes
these things happen, because, as you know, there are people that are in great
disagreement with us. But we are continuing to work and to do our best to end
any Federal funding.

The President. Well, all right. The
first of your noble marches came just one year after the Supreme Court issued
its decision in Roe v. Wade. And for a decade and a half, you've worked to end
the tragedy that -- since that day when the Court, in the stroke of a pen,
legalized abortion across our nation -- has claimed the lives of more than 20
million infants.

Twenty
million -- that's more than twice the population of New York City and close to the
population of all of California. And yet our opponents
tell us not to interfere with abortion. They tell us not to impose our morality
on those who wish to allow or participate in the taking of the life of infants
before birth. Yet no one calls it imposing morality to prohibit the taking of
life after a child is born. We're told about a woman's right to control her own
body. But doesn't the unborn child have a higher right, and that is to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Or would our critics say that to defend
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is to impose morality? Are we to
forget the entire moral mission of our nation through its history?

Well,
my answer, and I know it's yours, is no. America was founded on a moral
proposition that human life -- all human life -- is sacred. And this
proposition is the bedrock of our national life, the foundation of our laws.
It's the wellspring of our Constitution. Courts may ignore it, and they have.
They cannot -- and I should add -- have not denied it. When reverence for life
can have no boundaries, when we begin to take some life casually, we threaten
all life.

A
few years ago, I spoke about the pain that we now know an unborn fetus
experiences in the course of an abortion. At the time there was an outcry --
enraged criticism and angry denials. But criticism wasn't the only response. It
so happened that I received a letter signed by 24 medical doctors, including
eminent physicians like the former chief of pediatrics at the St. Louis City
Hospital and the president of the New York State Medical Society. They
discussed recent advances in medical technology and concluded: ``Mr. President,
in drawing attention to the capability of the human fetus to feel pain, you
stand on firmly established ground.''

Well,
you know, I couldn't help noticing, that letter received far less coverage than
the many derisive attacks that preceded it. Modern medicine treats unborn
children as patients. Mothers are advised to calm the fetus with music. Some
say that Mozart is particularly soothing. Isn't there enough evidence for even
skeptics to admit that those who assert the personhood of the fetus may be
right? And if we are to err, shouldn't it be on the side of life? I believe
it's time the law caught up with science.

Now,
I'm going to ask your support on a few things. We have sent up to Congress the prolife bill. It states that abortion is the taking of a
human life and stops all Federal funding of abortion by making the Hyde
amendment permanent. It needs your support, and it deserves your support.

We
will soon publish regulations that will cut off Federal family planning funds
from abortion-related activities. The law prohibits using title X money to
encourage or promote abortion in any way. Yet under the current guidelines,
title X programs must offer abortion counseling and referrals. It has been
argued that this is evenhanded, a way of ensuring that young women are
presented with all options. But that's not how it's worked out. Too often, the
same title X funded programs that give referrals have
financial ties to programs that perform abortions. In practice, young women
using their services have sometimes been led to believe that abortion is their
best, if not their only option. As one young woman reported recently in a
comment on our new regulations: ``I was not given a complete picture [by the
family planning clinic]. . . . The decision I made for abortion was no decision
at all. It was a coercion.''

Well,
our new regulations will put an end to this conflict of interest in cases where
title X funds are involved. They will prohibit using title X money for any
program that performs abortions, or counsels or refers for abortions, or
promotes abortion through the media, the courts, or anyplace else. They will
require family planning programs to be both financially and physically separate
from facilities that use abortion as a method of family planning -- no mingling
of silver. We are getting title X back to Congress' original intent: reducing
the number of abortions. But as you know, original intent is controversial
these days. We'll need your help in defending these regulations.

Now,
before I hang up, let me suggest that we all take a moment for a silent prayer
-- prayer for wisdom and, since ours is a merciful cause, that we ourselves
will know mercy for the suffering of women who have had abortions and for the
troubled mind with which so many Americans meditate on this issue. Shall we
pray?

[At
this point, the participants prayed silently.]

Amen.

Good
luck, and God bless you all.

Miss
Gray. We thank you, Mr. President. And we want to join with you, and we will
work to perfect those bills. We also want to include in our prayers and our
silent prayers the prisoners of conscience who are in the jails because they
have tried to stop the abortions, and we are sorry that Joan Andrews is not
with us today. Thank you, Mr. President.

The President. Thank you all. God
bless you.

Note: The President
spoke at 12:02
p.m. from the Oval Office
via a loudspeaker hookup with the rally site. Participants had gathered on the
Ellipse for a march to the Supreme Court on the 15th anniversary of the Court's
decision in "Roe v. Wade," which legalized abortion. Nellie Gray was
president of March for Life. In her closing remarks, she referred to Joan
Andrews, who was convicted in Florida of illegal antiabortion activities.